He Hid Our Marriage for Two Years, So I Told the Whole Ballroom novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: Table Nineteen

Verity's father calls the Harbor's loan on the steps and Lachlan asks Ione to say it was a joke; she refuses and drives away to a text from his mother.

"Let go of my arm," I said.

Lachlan did not let go.

He steered me through the ballroom doors and into the marble lobby, where the coat check girl stared at us over her ticket book.

"Ione, please. Just a minute."

"You've had two years of minutes."

He let go then.

His hand opened, and he stood there looking at the red marks his fingers had left on my skin.

"I didn't mean to grab you," he said.

"I know."

I did know.

That was the worst part of him: he was never cruel on purpose.

He just never chose, and then someone else chose for him.

The ballroom doors banged open behind us.

A heavy man in a dinner jacket came through them with two other men at his shoulder.

I had seen his photograph in the same society pages as his daughter.

Verity's father.

He did not look at me at all.

"Lachlan," he said. "A word, here, so your guests can hear it."

Lachlan went very still. "Sir, let me explain tonight."

"You stood next to my daughter while your mother announced an engagement to a man who has a wife."

His voice carried across the lobby.

Guests were drifting out of the ballroom behind him and gathering in a half circle.

"The Gadsden bridge loan on your terminal is payable on ninety days' notice," Verity's father said. "This is my notice."

"You said the loan was tied to the merger, not to my personal life."

"A man who lies to his own board about his marriage will lie about a manifest."

He turned his back, and the two men with him turned too.

A hundred people watched them leave.

Then, slowly, a hundred people turned to look at me.

I held my clutch in both hands and felt my face go hot.

Then I felt something else under the heat, small and clear.

I was not sorry.

Lachlan took my elbow again, gently this time, and walked me out through the front doors onto the steps.

The night air smelled of the river and wet magnolia leaves.

A valet jumped up from his stool.

Lachlan waved him back.

"Ione." He dragged a hand down his face. "You've broken the Harbor."

"I told the truth," I said.

"I'll never recover this," he said. "Gadsden was forty percent of our credit."

"You told me you were going to say it tonight," I said.

"I was going to. After the dinner. I had it planned," he said.

"You said not tonight, into a microphone. Four hundred people heard you."

He looked at the stone steps.

"Mother had cornered me. I was trying to buy an hour," he said.

"You've been buying hours for two years, Lachlan."

He drew a breath.

Then he said it.

"Tell them it was a joke."

I stared at him.

"Tell them you were upset about work," he went on.

"Say you were not yourself. Mother will make a statement and it'll blow over by Monday."

"A joke."

"Please," he said. "For the Harbor. For the four hundred people who work for us."

"And me?" I asked.

"We can fix us after."

There it was again.

Something closed in me then, quietly, for the baby's sake as much as mine.

My hand went to my stomach again.

He saw it and did not understand it.

I almost told him.

The words were right there in my mouth: I'm eight weeks along, Lachlan, it's yours, I was going to tell you in the car.

Then I imagined the sentence going into a man who had just asked me to call my own marriage a joke.

I imagined what he would do with it.

He would use it to ask for more time.

"No," I said.

"Ione."

"I'm not telling anyone it was a joke," I said. "I'm not telling anyone anything else tonight."

I went down two steps and turned.

"If you ever want me back in your life, you'll say it yourself."

"In front of the people who matter, with nothing waiting on the other side of the sentence."

"What does that mean?" he asked.

"It means no after," I said.

My sister's old Civic was parked on the next block because I had not wanted the valets to see me arrive in it.

I walked to it in my gala shoes, past three photographers who had come to take pictures of the Gadsden engagement.

They were not taking pictures of the Gadsden engagement now.

I ignored them and got in.

I was shaking so hard that it took me three tries to put the key in.

Lachlan stood at the top of the steps in the light of the streetlamps and did not come after me.

I drove to Posey's apartment on Habersham with the windows down, and I did not cry until the second red light.

My phone buzzed against the cupholder.

I looked down at it at the next stop sign.

It was a text from a number I did not have saved, but I knew it from the Foundation mailers.

"My lawyer will call at nine. Don't make this uglier. R. Beaufain."

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend